Fuck It. I Like Poetry and I Love You

Skip it 👎

Some of these poems have insight, but the vast majority lack poetic features and are really prose pieces in different forms.

Synopsis

This book is chock-full of action and badassness and explosions and... okay, not really. It's just a bunch of poems that talk life, love and death and all the in-betwe... okay, there's not really any life or love in-between...

It's just a bunch of sad shit about death... Fine! You got me! There's some lovey-dovey shit in there, too...

Lots of lovey-dovey shit.

Outside of some rhyme, there are no discernible poetic features here. A few of the shorter poems do show some insight. The title is shocking, and leads the reader to expect cutting-edge, innovative, and unconventional poetry. That is not the case; the title appears designed to merely shock.

For example, this is a typical example:

How to Have Fun

There’s only one way to have fun.

You’ll need to get a dinosaur.

That’s definitely step one.

Hop on it and take a ride

off to an exotic land.

If you see monsters, hide.

There is a rhyme scheme, in this case not forced, And there is rhythm within a stanza, although it varies from stanza to stanza. As a result, the flow of the poem comes to a halt.

The introduction pronises a "lot of lovey-dovey shit" after a few intentional false starts of what will follow. My impression was that the person behind the book was not really serious about it. Then, why should readers take it seriously?

This is a self-published book. One of the great debates in publishing nowadays is whether or not a writer should seek a conventional publisher or self-publish. There are hybrid forms out there as well; to discuss them would lead the discussion away from the point I want to make. Sometimes a writer wants to have total control over the work and/or to offer it to the public quickly. A traditional publisher is on a schedule that requires six months or longer to produce a book.

That being said, I strongly suspect that this book is self-published for the simple reason that no respectable publisher would have accepted it in its current form. My hope is that this becomes a teachable moment for the person who self-published this book. It is time for a self-assessment and to avail himself of a mentor somewhere.

I do not wish to be negative, but I am compelled to be honest to poetry.

Reviewed by

I am a published poet with four books out there of my own, and two in collaboration with artist Carol Worthington-Levy. Additionally I have drafts of a novel and one short story in the process of being sent out.

Synopsis

This book is chock-full of action and badassness and explosions and... okay, not really. It's just a bunch of poems that talk life, love and death and all the in-betwe... okay, there's not really any life or love in-between...

It's just a bunch of sad shit about death... Fine! You got me! There's some lovey-dovey shit in there, too...

Lots of lovey-dovey shit.

How to Have Fun

There’s only one way to have fun.

You’ll need to get a dinosaur.

That’s definitely step one.

Hop on it and take a ride

off to an exotic land.

If you see monsters, hide.

Then make a daring escape.

Yes, make your way to a boat

and hide inside a crate.

Live the life of a stowaway

until someone finds you

and then say the word, “parley”.

Make the captain laugh

so he puts you on his crew

then gives you half of a treasure map.

The other half, it’s been foretold

is in a nest of giant birds

whose eggs are far too big to hold.

Climb a mountain to get to its nest

and when you see the missing piece,

reach for it, in hope to find what’s next.

A bird will grab you and carry you off

high above the ocean, where a —

“What’re you doing?” She asks me with a tired voice.

“Nothing, sorry I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Are you writing something over there?”

“Yeah, just a little poem.”

She giggles. “I love your poems. You can finish up, I don’t mind.”

I feel her smile on my back. While she starts to doze back to sleep, I set my phone down for the night. Snuggling in, I say, “It’s not important.”

She kisses my back until it tickles, then smushes her face into me. Her breath, a metronome, ticks me back to sleep. Just before I doze away myself, I smile and whisper, “Who has more fun?”